Facebook’s free basics services, which is formerly known as internet.org, has been widely criticized in India for violating the principles of net neutrality. The idea that facebook is trying to portray is to give novices a taste of internet. But real idea behind this is to draw first-time users to their services and make them use to it daily and slowly encourage them to buy data services for costlier prices. This will be profitable for both internet service providers and facebook as well. By this, Facebook and its partners are discouraging people from using competing services, which will badly affect the start-up eco system.
This selective access to the internet is like curbing freedom of expression. As telecom ministry rightly said, “content
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Counter to this argument will be, “ then why not allow all websites on free basics services?” Facebook has also been campaigning for the free basics platform aggressively through newspapers and social media. It urged its over-130 million users in India to support Free Basics. In an appeal, Facebook claimed: “A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of Net Neutrality.” But this didn’t work due to strong resistance from net neutrality activists. This show how strong is that “Small” net neutrality lobby. Looking ahead, Facebook will likely to face more tough questions about their true motives. Our airwaves and wireless spectrum belong to us, the citizens of India. The government of India temporary licenses this on our behalf to telecoms under some terms and conditions, and those terms have always pushed for the development of all of India, including our poor. In fact, India’s telecom policies so far have produced a minor miracle, with over a billion connections in our country changing and improving all our lives. The basis for this has always our policies which have forced our mobile operators to offer a full